Shadows of Falling Night (38 page)

Dale shrugged again. “There is no point in taking chances. I do not think this Brotherhood rogue will notice that his plan worked…that is, he will think it was all by his own efforts that the local gendarmerie believed his tale of terrorists and smugglers.”

“It ought to be entertaining to watch,” Adrienne said. “Monica, the pastries.”

“The consequences of Vienna have not been too…unfortunate?” Dale said.

“No, Great-grandfather was seriously annoyed with me, but I managed to convince him that you had exceeded your instructions, and I was suitably chastened by your Final Death; excellent bit of camouflage there, by the way. It is not easy to deceive a Brézé adept. Adrian is up, though there is suspicion because he apparently killed you before you could be questioned; I am down, but not irredeemably so, and court favor with the Council will shortly no longer matter much. If at all. How do you find post-corporeal existence?”

A shrug. “Much better than nonexistence,” he said, and left.

Adrienne laughed. The hotel had an excellent view. The city glittered before her, the long curves of the Bosporus bridges bright to her night-adapted eyes. She grinned happily and nibbled a baklava as another set of lights began to drift across the sky, an airship running with its engines off.

There were few things so entertaining as watching an enemy make a mistake. And if you had subtly guided the enemy into that mistake…why, that was the honey glaze on the flaky pastry crust. Though…

“That was odd,” she said.

“
Doña?
”

“Kai didn’t make him angry.”

“That you hurt her?” she asked, surprised.

“No, that I
touched
her; he would have been able to smell her blood in me, and me on her. We generally hate people touching our things unless we’re very close, and I took some of his Wreakings out of her mind, which he would also be able to sense—now he’ll have to spend hours looking for booby-traps. He should have thanked me for getting her out of the church, but done so resentfully. And snarled at
her
; that’s why she was so charmingly torn between relief and fear when I turned her back over to him.”

“That’s not very logical, he
left
her there.”

“Don’t be dense, Monica, you’re not stupid. What has logic to do with it? I am speaking of emotional patterns and you’ve been around Shadowspawn long enough to know what we’re like.”

“Well, you
are
all very territorial. About your lucies, particularly.”

“Exactly. Instead he was indifferent, though to be sure he’s a very self-controlled man. Hmmm. It should have needled him worse than if I’d killed her. Not that it’s important, but still…Not that she’s much of a prize. A little of the Power, yes, but not a really interesting personality. Much easier to corrupt than you, for example.”

Stung, Monica protested: “I am
extremely
corrupt! Why, then-me would have absolutely hated now-me, if I could have seen me back then…you know what I mean?”

“Translated from Buffy-speak, yes.”

“So I’m just…corrupt in a
nice
way.”

“Fairly corrupt, not extremely, and I’ve been working on it for a decade. Evil I can do myself; perverting innocence is much more fun.”

Monica beamed. “I feel really guilty about it sometimes. I know you like that.”

“Very much. It tastes like paprika,” she said, and propped her feet up a little higher. “Fetch me…no, popcorn! There’s going to be a bit of a show.”

“Ummm…I don’t think we have any popcorn here.”

“Oh,
merde
. Well, some brandy, then.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Istanbul

T
he Zeppelin Company had long ago diversified into everything up to and including kitchenware, but since the turn of the century it had also taken to making airships again, mostly for the tourist trade. Ellen had even seen one during a holiday in San Francisco, taking a stately tour up the Napa Valley. They were midgets compared to the giants that had once bombed London and circumnavigated the globe right after World War One, but still nearly three hundred feet long; there were pivoting engines in pods, and the controls were all digital and fly-by-wire. Ellen knew that in fact it was gossamer-fragile and light, but instinct said it was a massive hulk hovering impossibly overhead.

It loomed like some great prehistoric night-creature over the roof, not like an aircraft at all. The buzzing throb of the engines died down to
a low growl just sufficient to hold it in place, and a rope-ladder dropped from the gondola along with a grapnel cable. Someone tied that off. Adrian went up first and Ellen right behind him, glad that she’d always been athletic—she was a runner and tennis-player of considerable merit, and she’d learned more recondite skills since. Adrian moved like a leopard in the night, nearly running upward, and paused to give her a hand through the hatchway.

The seats had been removed inside the gondola, except for the pilot’s; it was surprisingly small, after the huge bulk of the lifting body, no bigger inside than a minor commuter jet. Fourteen people crowded it, and she put an arm around the solid slimness of Adrian’s waist as they both gripped handholds on the walls. It was always a bit of a shock when something reminded her that he was actually below average height. The air had an electric crackle, and that distinct fruity scent of Break Free gun oil, and very faint powder residues that apparently never entirely came out of clothing.

It’s my imagination that I can smell the blood. I’m glad the Brotherhood approves of showers and soap and deodorant,
she thought.
They can be sort of self-punishing at times.

The cable slipped free. There was a curious rising-elevator sensation, and a rumble and splash as water ballast cut loose. The pilot chuckled.

“Never thought I’d get a chance to actually
do
this,” he said.

In a thick Australian accent, what she thought of as a
roip
way of talking; he was a man in his thirties with a thick shock of yellow hair beneath the headset.

“Always thought the higher-ups were bonkers for putting me through fuckin’ Hindenburg school, and here I am floating over to a bunch of clowns with fuckin’ shooters and whizz bangs.”

Adrian leaned forward. “Can you do a silent approach?”

“Come upwind and drift down?” A shrug. “I can try it. Tricky, though. All things considered I’d rather be back in Borroloola snogging the salties.”

The big aircraft spiraled upward, and lines crawled over the screen’s GPS unit. That looked patched in and clamped in an improvised mount; someone had liberated a military-grade model for this.

“Here we go,” the pilot said, and cut the engines.

Silence fell, broken only by the whine and click of small electronic components. Lights and streets and buildings drifted by beneath, shockingly close; the hills north of the Golden Horn were coming up, and they were scarcely higher than the modest height of the tallest towers.

I wonder how they’re handling the police and air traffic control,
Ellen thought, the words drifting through the tension in her mind.
I wonder how many laws we’re breaking?

The thought was remote. That whole world, laws, regulations, the mechanisms of civil society, seemed so distant now. And more than remote—she was thoroughly enclosed now in the cystlike prison of the Council-Brotherhood War—but the real world seemed so unreal once you knew how the world really worked. A false front, a reassuring story told to children, a Potemkin village, a world pulled over the world’s eyes. It was a profoundly unsettling thought, when you let yourself dwell on it, so most of the time she didn’t.

Of course, so is the fact that you’re floating in a balloon towards people who want to shoot you, she thought.
Then:
Wait a minute
…

“This thing won’t
burn
, will it?” she asked.

The pilot grinned without turning around, though there was little he could do while the zeppelin was free-floating at the same speed as the air that bore it up, with nothing for the control services to bite on. She could
see his reflection in the glass of the gondola’s windows ahead of him, ghostly and pale.

“No, don’t worry about us doing a Hindenberg. It’s helium in there”—he jerked a thumb upward—“not flammable. Skin’s not doped with rocket fuel, either.”

She blinked. “Rocket fuel?”

“Just a bit of an exaggeration. It was iron oxide and aluminum and cellulose acetate on the outside of the old Zeps, though. Burns a treat. This lady’s all composites and synthetics, strong and fireproof. Mind you, it’s all too thin to stop a bullet. Like riding in an empty beer can that way.”

Adrian chuckled at that, as did most of the group. One—the tall thin black woman with the Yoruba teardrop scars below her eyes—glanced at Ellen and shrugged as if to say
what can you do?

The pilot glanced at the screen, where high definition pictures flowed from the radar-laser scanners. A spot steadied on the roof of the building that was their target. “Coming up. I’ll have to restart the engines to hold us over the roof, there’s a bit of a breeze.”

Adrian shook his head, an abstracted look in his yellow-flecked eyes. “No. I will go down on a line and secure it. You can winch the craft in after the assault group rappels down. Is everyone clear on that? Objections?”

Everyone
looked at him then; even Ellen, though she knew he wasn’t as reckless as he sounded sometimes. Because…

“You’d have to be dead lucky,” the pilot said. Then: “Oh. You
are
dead lucky, right, sport?”

Adrian nodded. “Perhaps lucky enough. Then again, perhaps not,
hein
?”

That brought a chuckle; this time the scarred woman, whose name
had been something like Abayomi, joined in. Ellen gave his arm a single brief squeeze as he knelt by the door and opened it, reaching around and down for the wire cable with its lock-loop on one end, casual about the hundreds of feet of open space below him. The light of the city poured in, but the breeze surprised by being gentle, if cold.

Because we’re floating with the air,
she realized.
At the same speed as the wind so we don’t feel it.

Below, a dark street crawled by, with pools of light where the streetlamps cast puddles that glittered where the beams struck standing water and damp pavement. The rain was still falling, turning the glitter of windows and cars beyond watery and shifting. With the hatch open she could hear the murmur and rumble of traffic, and the shushing white-noise sound of the rain itself on miles of rooftops and pavements and the tin-roof drumbeat on the zeppelin itself.

Adrian looked at her and nodded once as he snapped a hook to link the line to his body.

“Give me the word,” he said crisply.

“Right,” the pilot said tightly, his eyes moving between the GPS screen and the inward-slanting window ahead of his position. “Coming up…we’re going to cross right over it.”

“Just about…
now!
”

Adrian leapt into the darkness, trusting in qualities of mind and muscle and bone to stop at just the right moment where the moving line draped over the roof. Ellen’s heart seemed to lurch in her chest, even before the weight coming on the line made the vast gossamer fabric of the airship bob and dip. Then there was a solid
yank
, a groan of protesting trusses, and the football-field bulk of the zeppelin swiveled in the air as the line turned its nose into the wind.

“We’re solid,” the pilot barked, and reached up for the emergency gas
valve, yanking on it to balance the weight that would be leaving the airship. “As long as the bloody thing doesn’t tear loose. Go, go,
go
!”

The Brotherhood troopers swung out; each hooked on, locked an arm and a leg around the cable that swooped out in a long curve into the night and slid away. Ellen had never actually done a rappel like this in reality, though some of the rock climbing had come close. In the dreamspace of Adrian’s mind, yes, often, and in conditions far worse…and it would work just like real training, if she didn’t think about it and paralyze herself.

Hubbie’s waiting for me,
she thought, and let her body act as it
thought
it had done a hundred times before.

A jerk as her weight came on one elbow, the hand on that arm locked under the other armpit, her ankles crossed on the cable below with the soles of her boots clamped on it to slow the descent and keep the cable from burning through the leather jacket. There was gear specifically for this, but they didn’t have it and you didn’t need it for a short drop…if you were strong and willing to take risks.

Rushing night, a flash of exhilaration, then dark shapes looming. She released about six feet up, landed and rolled on the asphalt surface of the rooftop, grunting slightly as she slammed into a ventilation duct. Luckily that was the corner—it hurt, but it didn’t boom much. The black shape of the dirigible above them bobbed upwards, hauling the cable more nearly straight. There was a hiss of released gas, but the pilot didn’t bring the airship down too far. They’d need to get back on board. She rolled back to her feet, felt an inner tickle that was Adrian checking on her—he’d installed a Wreaking to let her know when he did that, and another that could shut him out if she chose. Right now she hadn’t the
slightest
desire to do that.